Tofu and Vegetable Stir-Fry with Sweet and Spicy Sauce

WE HAVE BEEN ON A BIG STIR-FRY KICK for a few weeks. The frigid weather seems to have cleared out, yet I am afraid to think we are having an early spring this year, It is only February.

Stir-fries are perfect to enjoy during changing seasons--times when it is not cold enough to want a heavy soup or stew, yet not hot enough to want to eat salads for meals. Stir-fry vegetables are light and fresh and the spices of ginger and red pepper are warming.

For this stir-fry, I used onion, red bell pepper, cremini mushrooms, broccoli, Napa cabbage, and bok choi. Other vegetables that work well are snow peas, carrots, green beans, mung bean sprouts, cabbage, scallions, asparagus, zucchini, and spinach. Use a variety of vegetables like I do or stick with one or two--your choice.

I served this stir-fry with Jasmine rice but I have also used brown rice, udon noodles, and soba noodles. One of these days I might try cellophane noodles.

Tofu and Vegetable Stir-Fry with Sweet and Spicy Sauce

Sauce:
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup honey
2 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger
2 - 3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. toasted sesame oil
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1/2 - 1 tsp. red pepper flakes

Stir-Fry
14 ounces extra firm tofu
1/4 cup cornstarch
Oil for frying
8 - 10 cups vegetables of choice, washed and chopped

Rinse and dry the tofu. Wrap in a couple layers of paper towels, place on a plate with another plate on top. Put a couple of cans on the top plate to press the tofu. Set aside while making the sauce and preparing the vegetables.

Whisk together all the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Unwrap the tofu and toss with the cornstarch.

Heat 1/2-inch of oil in a wok or deep skillet over medium heat. Fry the tofu in batches, until brown on all sides. Remove to paper towel lined plate to drain.

Remove all but 1 Tbsp. oil from the wok and turn the heat to medium high. Beginning with the sturdier vegetables, add them to the wok; stir and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the more delicate vegetables, stir and fry for a minute more. Add the tofu and the sauce, continuing to cook for 1 or 2 minutes more.

Remove wok from heat and serve immediately.

Fresh Cherry Chutney

AS AN ATTEMPT TO FIND MY LOST MOJO and break out of my case of the vapors, I bought a cheerful bag of fresh, ripe, juicy cherries. Due to some recent events in our life, my dear husband was feeling the same way. He came home with a bag of beautiful, velvety South Carolina peaches.

We tackled a dreaded but much needed task, together, over the weekend. Having that behind us and looking forward to gorgeous summer fruit seems to be working its magic.

The first thing I made was a spicy, bracing cherry chutney. Chutney is a condiment or sauce of East Indian origin made with sweet, sour, and spicy ingredients. Think of using chutney in place of cranberry sauce, raisin sauce, even jam or preserves. Top crackers with cream cheese and a dollop of chutney for a fulfilling snack. I especially love chutney with pungent cheese. 

Next up, I will show one of the uses I made of this chutney, but meanwhile, on to the recipe. This is a small and easily manageable batch of chutney.

Fresh Cherry Chutney

1 cup fresh cherries, washed, pitted, and halved

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2/ cup chopped red onion

3 Tbsp. brown sugar

1/4 cup golden raisins

2 Tbsp. chopped candied ginger

1 tsp. black mustard seeds

2-inch piece of cinnamon 

3 whole cardamom

freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 tsp. sea salt

Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan. Heat over medium until boiling. Cover, turn heat to low and simmer gently 30 minutes. Remove lid and continue to cook until the sauce is thickened, just a few minutes more. Remove from heat. Remove the cinnamon stick and cardamom pods.

Use right away or spoon into a jar to refrigerate. 

Sesame Noodles

THE SNOW HAS STARTED FALLING and the construction project has ended for the day. Thank you, Marcus. One of my favorite things about snow is the quiet it brings.

Across the street, a trackhoe has been busy all day every day for weeks, beginning at 7 AM. I don't know what the project is but I do know every move that thing makes is accompanied by an extremely loud and high pitched beep, beep, beep. I realize it is an OSHA requirement for safety. But are people for miles around in danger of being injured by that thing? Why does it have to be so LOUD? So far, there is a big pile of dirt, a big pile of rocks, and a big pile of roots.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Sesame Noodles are a great favorite of mine. I serve this as an entree but it can also be a side dish. If you want it as a main course but it doesn't seem hearty enough, chicken would be quite good added in.

Sesame Noodles
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup warm water
2 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
2 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
3/4 pound spaghetti (pictured) or udon or soba noodles
4 scallions, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 carrots, thinly sliced
3 Tbsp. toasted sesame seeds

In a large bowl, whisk the peanut butter, soy sauce, warm water, ginger, garlic, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, honey, and pepper flakes, until smooth.

Cook the pasta in boiling salted water until tender. Drain.

Add the pasta, scallions, red bell pepper, carrots, and sesame seeds to the dressing, tossing to combine.

Tastes good served warm or cold.

Fresh Strawberry & Ginger Jam (a small batch)

IT IS A COOL AND RAINY DAY and I am glad. I'm having a tad of trouble transitioning to summer. It is not the heat--I love that. It is the noise. From year to year, I forget waking before dawn to the cheep, cheep, trilling, cawing, cooing, tweedle-dee of our avian choir. It is really a joyful sound but it does jar me from my dreams.

Then the machines start up. The mowers, blowers, trimmers, tillers. Somewhere in the neighborhood a building project is happening, so there is hammering and buzzzzing and the most grating sound in the world, that high-pitched, jangly beep-beep-beep of some vehicle in reverse. Repeatedly. Do those things only go backward?

Today, the birds are roosting, the gardening and building projects are on hold, the weather is cooler and I have closed the windows.

What a great day to simmer a fragrant pot of strawberries. . .

Fresh Strawberry & Ginger Jam
1 pound fresh strawberries, washed, hulled, and diced
1 cup sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbsp. candied ginger, diced

Combine ingredients in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes until mixture begins to look syrupy and thickened.

Let cool to room temperature before serving. Refrigerate leftovers.

Quinoa Croquettes

These delicious croquettes are a spin-off  from my Ten Layer Salad. I used quinoa in that salad and had some leftover I wanted to eat because that stuff is expensive!

Up until now, I have avoided jumping on the band wagon of quinoa's current popularity. I had eaten it in the past and frankly, I just didn't find it to be, pardon the antiquated cliche, "all that".  But I recently decided to give it another chance to shine and splurged on some.

And I do mean splurge. I was buying some items from the bulk bins as follows: wheat berries at 89c per pound, brown rice at 1.29 and quinoa at 4.59!  And that was bulk prices.

Once again, I found the cooked quinoa to be rather ho-hum flavor-wise.  However, once I jazzed it up and made it into savory little cakes, we loved it.

Quinoa Croquettes
2 cups cooked quinoa, chilled
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tsp. freshly grated ginger
1 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
3 scallions, thinly sliced
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan or other hard cheese

Combine all ingredients and form into patties. If the mixture is too dry to hold together, add another egg. If it is too wet, add more bread crumbs.

Place formed patties onto a sheet pan and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Cover the bottom of a heavy skillet with a light cooking oil and set over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, use a spatula to gently lower the croquettes, one at a time, into the pan. Let them brown, undisturbed, on the first side. Then gently turn them over and brown on the second side.

When golden brown on both sides, place onto paper towels or brown paper to drain.

Can be served piping hot but are equally delicious at room temperature.

Ten Layer Salad with Fresh Ginger Dressing

FOR A RECENT LADIES LUNCH, I was asked to bring a salad. People often ask me to bring the salad because they know I will actually make a nice salad, rather than stopping by the grocery store deli for potato salad, or bringing a bag of lettuce, a box of jaw breaker croutons and a bottle of dressing.



















I knew all the ladies attending the luncheon favored THE seven layer salad. You know the one, right? It has been a staple at picnics forever and consists of lettuce (iceberg), boiled eggs, bacon, cheddar cheese, peas, cucumbers, and tomatoes all layered in a pretty glass bowl. The deal breaker with that salad is what goes on top. I have never seen one that did not have a thick layer of mayonnaise to seal in the fresh ingredients below it.

No. I just have to say no, absolutely not, to a thick layer of mayo on my salad.

I designed this salad after a vegetable juice I had bought, a few days earlier, at the health food store and adored. The flavors were just fantastic together. Of course my juice blend did not include quinoa but I wanted this salad to be substantial so I added it here with great result.

Ten Layer Salad
Quinoa
Scallions
Bok Choy
Cucumber
Pineapple
Parsley
Red Bell Pepper
Celery
Crisp apple plus lemon juice to prevent discoloration
Alfalfa Sprouts

Cook quinoa according to package directions and let cool. Wash all vegetables, including the alfalfa sprouts. Slice the bok choy, cucumber, scallions, and celery. Dice fresh pineapple which was previously peeled and cored, and also dice red bell pepper. Remove large stems from a handful or two of fresh parsley. Peel and dice apple, drizzle with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, and toss to coat.

Layer ingredients in a pretty clear glass bowl in the order given.

I also made marinated cheese (recipe forthcoming in another post) which can be used as an alternate dressing to make the salad even more substantial.

Extra ingredients can be layered in jars and saved in the refrigerator for several days.



















Fresh Ginger Salad Dressing
1/2 cup salad oil
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup honey
1 T. fresh grated ginger
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Place all ingredients in a jar and shake to blend (or use electric blender)

Place salad layers into a bowl and toss to combine. This really is a terrific combination of flavors.

Roasted Thai Eggplant

I HAVE SPOKEN SEVERAL TIMES about my husband's love of shopping so I thought it only fair to talk about mine. My Retail Therapy comes from shopping for food. Besides my regular grocery store, I look at and shop for food in Mexican Tiendas, an Oriental Market, 5 different independently owned, local Natural Food Stores. I discovered a little grocery area connected to a gas station that carries Middle Eastern and Indian foods. We have a wonderful State Farmers Market in Asheville, North Carolina and many smaller tailgate markets have sprung up all over town. We have 3 different supermarket chains based right here out of North Carolina and one from our neighbors in South Carolina. We have 2 (that I know of) local, independent meat markets. We have a few of what I call Boutique stores, spice shops, bakeries. So many choices.

With all those food stores thriving in our area, the big guys have decided to move in. Whole Foods is building a huge store and so is Publix. A Trader Woe's just opened and I do not "get" that one. Six different locally owned small businesses, were put out of business and razed to make room for a national corporate chain. Here in the era of emphasis on local food and environmental awareness, we have a store based out of California, the furthest state from us--a store where everything is packaged. Every produce item is wrapped. And for a store that built its reputation on "natural foods", they are anything but. I read labels. They don't and won't reveal the sources of their private label items. From the outside, the store looks huge--a hulking thing in the small mixed use neighborhood, but I was shocked when I got inside to find how small it is.  All facade. But they have cool clip art and aloha shirts. And an almost cult-like following.

Yesterday, I was in one of our local supermarkets and spotted these cute little eggplants about the size of ping-pong balls.  I just had to try them. They were labeled Thai eggplant, but they were locally (greenhouse) grown.

When I cut them open, I was surprised by how many dark seeds they had. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't that. So I rinsed them, salted  liberally with Celtic sea salt,  let them set for 30 minutes, and then rinsed thoroughly.

In a large mixing bowl, I combined about 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger, 1 garlic clove, minced, and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Then I tossed the eggplant with the mixture and spread them onto a rimmed sheet pan.

Roast in a 400 degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes, turning half way through the cooking time.

I was originally planning to make a curry sauce for these and serve over brown rice. But they were so delicious just like this, we ate them as a side dish. These eggplants were so flavorful, they didn't even need a dipping sauce.

Meyer Lemon and Ginger Honey

TUMMIES LOVE GINGER AND LEMON. Honey makes hearts happy. The healing powers of these three foods have been known for centuries and are too numerous to name. The taste of each element of this mixture is lovely; combined: beautiful.

Feeling under the weather? Try a warm cup of tea with a spoonful or two of this infused honey. Stomach upset, mix with cold sparkling water. Cough? Try a spoonful straight from the jar. Some will tell you to combine an ounce with a shot of spirits. Drink hot, dress warmly, and go to bed.

Aside from the healing qualities, this flavored honey is a culinary powerhouse. Try some mixed with soy sauce and olive oil for a delicious salad dressing. Invigorating when added to a blueberry smoothie.  My husband suggested I use the lemons and ginger to roast a chicken, once the honey is gone.

What ideas can you think of for this lovely mixture?

Meyer Lemon and Ginger Honey
1 clean, pint jar with tight-fitting lid
3 Meyer lemons (or regular lemons)
2 - 3 inch piece of ginger, scrubbed very well to remove any sand or grit
Honey (preferably your local honey)

Slice lemons and ginger, thinly and pack into jar. Pour over honey and let sit for 48 hours before using.

For best results, store in refrigerator.